#anyways its a horse encyclopedia

[cast-in-copper]

Thoughts, guesses and Ideas on the ancient breeds yet to come:

Nature Ancient: on the world map, it mentions that Nature clans are shamanic and weve the nature around them. Wildclaws are very much not that, but perhaps the ancient breed was. The Gladekeeper created one breed to care for the forest, and another to defend it/be wild creatures hunting around in it. As for appearance, I’m guessing either a bulky dinosaur-like dragon with plants on its back instead of wings similar to the gladekeeper herself, or a small Dino-bird like creature with feathered wing arms and a beak for weaving plants. (Or both it’s arms and legs could be wings like an archaeopteryx!) Another route they could go with is crazy wild primate or leopard like creature hidden in the shrieking wilds, or something like a bird of paradise with heavy sexual dimorphism and bright garish colors. This last idea could also be combined with the Dino-Bird one.

Light Ancient: it’s stated in the encyclopedia that the Imperials were the Lightweaver’s first children. This seems unlikely to be retconned, so I’ll try to work with it. I could see a species like the knowledge seekers from Avatar, one that exists to gather information and bring it back to the Lightweaver. I could also see a breed that was created at the same time as, or shortly after the imperials, they might be a healer class, to help deal with dead imperials, perhaps a breed who became jealous/afraid of the imperials and hid underground, a breed that has been asleep for a long time that the emperor trampling around inadvertently digs up, ex. As for appearance, it’s gotta be either very beautiful and elegant or small and kinda weak, with big’ol’ eyes. It also definitely has the brightshine gene.

Wind Ancient: perhaps a breed that never stops flying, and has been up in the clouds for forever, or going on a long journey to circumvent the globe. it’s ether got disproportionately large wings, numerous wings, or no real wings, instead having a mane and/or wings made of vapors like the windsinger does.

Earth Ancient: This is the breed I think is most likely to not have wings at all, instead having some other structure to serve as the main expression of the secondary gene. A heavy beard or mane, a large dorsal fin, piles of colorful stones on their backs, ex. Although it’s pretty likely they will still get wings anyway. I can see this breed being something that was buried long ago, perhaps in the Carinstone Rest to care for the dead. Or their breed was all dead but they are revived through some magic and when they rise they have bones heavily incorporated into the design, and they are where the secondary genes are expressed. Or perhaps they all live on that weird island between earth and nature.

Unaligned Ancient: I’d like to see another unaligned breed, but i have very few ideas for it as there’s basically nothing to go off. Something aligned with the beast clans is a possibility, as is something that came from the surrounding ocean, or a tiny spec of unclaimed land. For appearance, I’m imagining something gator-like, or even cooler would be something horse like, a Kirin with wings. I guarantee all the horse girls will love it.

[claire-starsword]

Max’s Diary - Chapter 4

(12) Month of the Black Horse, Day 1

General Elliot, known across all of Rune. After our conversation on the Pao Train, we'll finally battle... Before that, the knights Pelle and Vankar, the flying weirdo Kokichi, and the mysterious animal Yogurt all joined the force. I'll let Pelle and Yogurt join for the next battle, while Mae and Luke can rest.

Pao Plains seem like a great place. You can't at all take advantage of the terrain. It will be a fair and clean advance. That's probably what Elliot wants too.

Anyway, Pelle is a great help. As expected of a mercenary. As for Yogurt... He's like a mascot. Maybe he came to help in a way I don't really understand. I'm sure that's it. I want to believe.

___

(13) Month of the Black Horse, Day 8

The impregnable​ fort, Uranbatol. Earnest, who was in the Pao Train, attacked it and seems to have caused some damage. Let's follow up with our own assault.

Once again we have more allies. Guntz who we saw at Rindo and Domingo who just hatched from his egg. Even though Guntz just arrived I'll leave him resting. Domingo is a cheeky brat, so let's see what he can do. I swapped Balbaroy with him.

Fort Uranbatol is already lacking guards. I'll send Domingo rushing there. Domingo who can cast Freeze repeatedly. I guess he's stronger than he looks. Everyone else is seeing him with new eyes as well. But then he started talking. "No one here knows this, but..." Ah, this won't work. Our morale is gonna drop with this.

___

(14) Month of the Black Horse, Day 14

We broke into Fort Uranbatol. There's a ship anchored at the harbor deep within the fort. If we get it, we might be able to go to the eastern side of the continent. I'll willing to take it. Let's go.

We rescued Earnest who had been caught by Runefaust, and faced against Balbazak. He was in the defensive as if wanting to board that ship, and we fought a bunch of Sea Bats and Hellhounds.

Taking care to not be surrounded by the automatic artillery, the Brass Loaders, we slowly made our way to Balbazak. The surrounding enemies including the Puppet were wiped out by Diane with her ranged attacks. We also chipped away at Balbazak from a range, and once he was weakened, Earnest struck. With this the ship is mine. Yes.

___

Notes:

(12): When Max says Yogurt might be helping in a way he's doesn't understand his exact wording is "よくわかんない", which is Yogurt's HQ quotes in the japanese version and also one of his catchphrase.

Still on Yogurt's catchphrases, the original doodle has the word "イカス" over him, which also show up in his in-game portrait in the jp version, and is heavily associated with Yogurt in general. While イカス has a bunch of possible meanings I believe he uses it in the sense of "stylish", because of his helmet, which as you might have seen in the other encyclopedia, is stolen. I adapted it here based on his HQ quote, which is likely based on the イカス thing to begin with.

(13): As I've already mentioned in Domingo's bio, he has a baby voice in the japanese version. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that he’s an arrogant know-it-all in HQ (and SFCD did keep the know-it-all part in its translation, though not the baby accent). The way he starts talking here is almost the same as one of his HQ quotes, in which, to be fair to him, he's just trying to stop everyone else from being goddamn flat-earthers

"Ahem. Did yu know? No one here believs it but, the wold isn't flat."

[im-the-punk-who]

Hey, I was wondering if you have a book rec

!!

Okay so in full disclosure, I have a really hard time reading books. My brain sometime around six years ago just decided that wasn't its style anymore, so I don't read a TON. A lot of these aren’t going to be recent releases. However, here are a bunch of books I would absolutely recommend checking out! I tried to include a variety of genres but I have uh.....five bookshelves in my apartment so if you're looking for more of a certain genre let me know!

Theatre:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

These are my two favorite plays - they're both absurdist, humorous, and have some fun things to say. They’re both by old white guys but like....I love both Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett DEEPLY and they have all of my love and respect.

Non-Fiction/Educational:

Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum - this is considered a 'classic' on the psychology of racism, and was particularly helpful for me as a white person in arming myself against 'reverse racism' thoughts and in dissembling my own prejudices. This is mostly a rec for other white folks, but Tatum also addresses 'having the courage to sit at the black table' as a way of claiming your own identity outside of the stereotypes the dominant society expects of you.

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown - Okay listen I just really REALLY love Brene Brown, she is a therapist most famous for her TED talk about Vulnerability and this is just...listen I really like to read this book when I am sad and feel like shit because it makes me feel strong. I reread this book at least once a year.

Imagined Communities by Benendict Anderson - This is an absolutely fascinating read on the rise of nationalism. It’s a bit dry and wordy, but the ideas and use of history as propaganda, spinning the story of a nation to pit it against or on the same side as other nations, and the ways in which these tactics shaped cultural history is just!!!! Amazing.

Gay New York by George Chauncey - This is just one of the most informative and interesting reads of queer history in New York that I’ve ever come across. It’s one of the ‘must reads’ of queer history and has so many interesting tidbits that I have to recommend it. It’s a bit old(published in 1994) but I still find it relevant and interesting to read.

Personal Fiction/Autobiographical Fiction

White Girls by Hilton Als - I went to a reading of this book when it first came out. It was so much fun and so eye-opening for me as a baby queer in NYC that I bought the book there. I wanna be really clear that Als does not pull punches and a lot of people don’t quite like it, but I love Als’ style of writing. The stories and essays in this book are amazing and funny and heartbreaking and informative of queer experience - particularly black queer experience - that I always feel like...honored? to experience through writing? This is one of those ‘you’re gonna suffer but you’re gonna be happy about it’ reads - it can be hard to face because of how very hard the pills are to swallow but like....gosh I just love this book and it’s interesting and hilarious and great.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins  - this is my tin hat favorite. It hits....ugh. This is one of those books that came out and like every government agency freaked the fuck out over it. It’s an interesting look into the quote-unquote dark underbelly of capitalism; how and why countries manipulate each other through economic policies. Super interesting read with a nice style of prose.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs Okay so full disclosure I have not finished reading this, but I’m far enough through to rec it. This book chronicles the author’s attempt to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from front to back, and it is just as kooky and hilarious as it sounds. I am very incredibly and deeply offended this author stole both my schtick and my initials, thereby preventing me from doing this exact thing. I read through the phone book in its entirety when I was three. I had it in me. Anyway, this is basically the author just listing weird interesting facts he’s read about and connecting them to his daily life, but it’s a fun read, and you learn a lot of totally useless facts, which is absolutely my jam.

When Skatboards Will Be Free by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - HI I LOVE THIS BOOK. I’ve read it maybe three times over. It’s so fun and interesting. You may notice that a lot of the books I rec are very absurdist in their humor, and this is no exception. This book is full of the dry wit and just weird goddamn shit you could only expect from the child of a revolution that never came. You want to read a book about someone who Went Through Shit? Read this book. It’s funny and heartbreaking and just. AHHHH. Seriously I cannot recommend this enough.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosch - FIGHT ME ON THIS. I love this book.....so much. Yes it’s technically a comic book but the stories are so INTERESTING and hilarious and full of exactly the dry absurdist humor I eat the fuck up. Also! Allie Brosch recently released a sequel of sorts called Solutions and Other Problems that I recommend without even reading it.

Poetry

Pansy by Andrea Gibson - IF YOU ARE NOT READING THE POETRY OF ANDREA GIBSON WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING WITH YOUR LIFE. I cried seven times reading this book. There are only like 14 poems. Please please read this to break your own queer heart :)

Bloodsport by Yves Olade - This is a tiny book full of absolutely devastating poetry. Most of it has to do with the grief of relationships, but like....gosh I love all of Olade’s stuff. (Also!! This is available as a pay-what-you-wish pdf!!)

Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón - This book focuses a lot on the author’s experiences of loss, and knowing that loss is going to happen. I’m completely devastated every time I read this.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

The Bartimeaus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud - So what if I am a dumb millennial I love this series. It’s another dry and deadpan humor, with weird additions and Stroud’s use of footnotes to absolutely crack me the fuck up means I gotta rec this. I just gotta. Four(I think?) books following the deeply unlikeable Nathaniel and his Djinn Bartimaeus, who just wants to eat humans and have a deeply enjoyable enemies to lovers plotline with his arch rival.

The Magic's Price Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey - Okay I know I’ve recced this before. I will rec it again. This was the very first series I ever read that featured a gay protagonist and I was. Devastated? Reformed? I latched onto Vanyel Ashkevron and I am never letting this depressed emo boy go. Try me, I bite. Seriously, this book was released in the 80s and yet it is still relevant, I still cry - god i LOVE this series SO MUCH. And, MERCEDES LACKEY actually invented unbury your gays, sorry I make the rule on that one. :) Also there are magic talking horses??????? Seriously please read this series I love it so much.

Fire Bringer & The Sight by David Clement-Davies - This is another series that was absolutely formative in my baby lexicon. These are books about magical animals and their inner societal workings and both books address the ideas of good, evil, darkness, compassion and good will, and destiny. I am obsessed with these books, they are some of the most interesting of the genre I’ve read, and so incredibly intricately written. LOVE these books.

Vampire Earth Series by E. E. Knight - The Witcher before it was cool. Sort of but like...there are schools of Cat, Bear, etc and it has COOL VAMPIRES I LOVE THSI SERIES. Basically, earth has been taken over by a race of alien ‘Vampires’ and follows a human involved in the resistance. The writing in this series is...wow. It’s so intricate and interesting and involved. I own the whole series because I love it so much, including the after-series hardback novels. I’m so messy and I love it.

Kindred by Octavia Butler - You know how people are like ‘YOU SHOULD READ OCTAVIA BUTLER!!’ ? You should absolutely do that. This novel is mindblowing and interesting and the pace and narrative are so so so interesting. Heartbreaking, god, horrific. Butler is an amazing writer and this novel, while my personal favorite, is not by any means the only of her books I would recommend. STORIES. STORIES!!!!!!!

Fiction

The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel by Magdalena Zyzak - This book is so fucking good. It’s imaginative, funny, intelligent....it’s honestly one of the best fiction novels I’ve ever read. Again, dry, absurdist humor, this book sort of reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s style of writing.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London - This is a classic, a true classic. The social commentary of this book is so so good, London’s style flows and, personally, as a dog and animal expert, the anthropomorphisation of Buck and his fellow animals is just so well done. I love this book, it’s quite an easy read, and I reread it at least once a year.

Rolling the R's by R. Zamora Linmark - Okay. Okay okay!!!!!! I gotta take a deep breath about this one. This book is. Yuh. This is a bit younger leaning than the other fictions, focusing almost entirely on high school level characters, however the experiences and commentary is just so so good. Focusing on a diverse group of characters growing up in Hawaii in the 1970′s, this book addresses the intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, race, immigration, education, and how we define who we are. I’m obsessed.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles - A heartbreaking novel about war, innocence, adolescence, and how we hide from our truths. It’s...so good, this book hurts me a LOT okay. The prose is phenomenal, the story is poignant, and it feels like I’m ripping my own heart out with a fishhook every time I finish it.

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan - This is one of those books I half recommend because it’s so good, and half because of the deep wealth of knowledge it presents the reader. The author’s use of her own culture is just....goddddddddd. Intricate and interesting and so delicately included in the narrative that you can feel the love the author has for it. It’s a long read and it took me almost a month to get through reading every day, but god. It’s so soft and amazingly written I both wanted to read it all at once and take my time with it. This is another one that deals with the duality of humanity and how we connect with one another. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead by James Kirkwood Jr. - I love this book I love this book I LOVE THIS BOOK. It’s fucking hilarious, entertaining, I literally laughed out loud at every single chapter. Hilarious and poignant and surprisingly deep, this book literally follows the journey of a man in which literally everything that could go wrong does. It’s fucking hilarious.

I hope that helped and gave you some new books!!! <3

[thelittlehansy]

Discussing ( again) if A Frozen Heart is canon.

To talk about it i m gonna talk about the many fair issues point out by fans in the book to doubt the book is canon.

No chris buck and lee approval.

I think the most likely scenario here is that a frozen heart belongs to all that stuff disney makes and planned when a disney movie come out it most likely they plan it since 2013 and since that book is the movie. It just retell it with Hans and Anna thought disney didnt think that book needed jeenifer lee and chris buck approval. It retell the movie but Without changing thing just putting stuff. Like for example i dont think they wait for Linda woolverton approval. When they publish novelization of maleficent (2014) same for pirate of the careebean.  As for the backstory what is mainly new mabe disney give directive to Elizabeth rudnick it was establish that Hans had a not good life in his Homeland and luckyly it fit with jennifer lee words later. I just dont think disney makes a big deal about Hans bacsktory. On the contrary of the fans who analyze everything and are supiscious of Hans life in his homeland. Disney seems to not makes a big deal about that. For them its clear their character got a shit life.since they publish the short comic with little Hans having scraps of his brothers food in disney storied place. that seems to be canon for them. 

inconsistency

Visual inacuracy

I tried to makes research in how many times time a book get publish. And its around 2 years. Traditional publishing take around 24 month. So october 2015 ? Thats move us to october 2013. So thats is most likely this book was wrote in 2013 when the movie didnt even come out. It will be faithful to elizabeth rudnick interview who said in it disney send her script and didnt even have the visual to work it. Thats is one of the issues she adress in her interview talking about fans who had issues with thing that are not right. So i think thats give us a solid explication as why hans eyes turn blue and sitron turn white.

"One of the hardest thing of novelization of a film script is that it changes no matter what the script i get it never gonna be the script that goes that you see on the film and There is a lot of time i Will get review and poeple will be there thats different from the movie and well i didnt have acess to the final script. So i get i mean they tried to give me the shooting script they tried and its very rare for me to get images or visual and i have To thought about whats going on in the script when there is an action scene i have To be hoping that what i m describing will reflect what is on the film. When i try to describe character outfit and expression i dont necesserarly know" ( 2019 interview can be find on youtube)

2- age

The age of hans 23 years old was talk in november 2013 in a jennifer lee tweet where she said she think Hans is 23. This is possible that Elizabeth rudnick has maybe finished writing the manuscript after fixed stuff like sitron name who was confirm in september 2013 by lee but didnt fixed the age maybe didnt knew jeenifer lee has give an age on her Twitter. In the encyclopedia of disney i found one day hans information said he had 12 older brothers and that his horse name is sitron so the horse name of hans seems to be very official stuff nothing at disney nothing is said about his age

Scene that were added.

While going thought the Elizabeth rudnick tag on twitter Someone said about maleficent a cut scene was in the book and the person was glad it was supress on the movie. It is possible that scene who was added where part of the script disney give to Elizabeth rudnick was not part of the movie at the end. (I think thats when Hans talk to the diplomat before talking To the duke) it is also faithful to what Elizabeth rudnick said she dont have the final script.so in the end the inconstitencies are more here because of elizabeth rudnick actually works for disney that here because she didnt do her research

4- Arendelle southern isles/Frozen Fever 

arendelle being away from the southern isles in the book. but close in frozen fever. so following what i say i think therefore this is possible the manuscript was wrote in 2013. and frozen fever i think began to be created around 2014 ? So thats could explain also this. And they miss that part.🤷‍♀️

The book is a fanfiction or its another universe.

I can understand this point about fanfiction but while doing research Elizabeth rudnick is someone that has been hire several times by disney to wrote their movies. Mulan (2020)lion king ( 2019)Aladdin (2019)A Frozen Heart (2015)Maleficent (2014)The Curse of Maleficent: The Tale of a Sleeping Beauty (2014)Mistress of Evil (2019)Thor (2011)captain america Pirates of the CaribbeanDead Men Tell No Tales (2017)Cinderella (2015)Beauty and the Beast (2017)

About the alternate The book is the movie. It change nothing but added the thought of Anna and Hans. Thats the same universe. And thats is not an anormal stuff to wrote a book from a character point of view. Divergent did it. we get to be in four head. same for the new twilight book where we are in the point of view of edward. Even from a different auhtor it will still be the same universe. so i can understand how the book can seem not canon because the woman who wrote it didnt work on the development of the character on the movie. so the argument will be more “ i dont consider this book canon because the development of the character was not wrote by the original screnwritor” and not “ i dont consider this book canon because that’s another universe”. adding thought about a character point of view doesnt make it another universe.also jennifer lee and chris buck are busy they cant wrote all the books of the franchise of frozen who has developp into a huge stuff because they are the original writor. (I read One day a team was created for that stuff.)

The book seems to be link to official information.

What makes me think that is the name of Agnarr. I read fans back in 2015 saying the book got agnarr wrong   and how they hope they are gonna fix the book mistakes in how this is not agnarr but agdar. and in the end ...well the names is actually wrote Agnarr. So the book has information the fans didnt have...weird that’s a offcial book publish by disney press and officially therefore approved by the walt disney compagny is right in how to spell the king name  and not the fans who translate it.. 🙃

.we are not sure if the book is canon

 yeah i agree ! We are not sure if that book is canon to the movies. Its publish by disney press and a several people work on it. Thats a still a big stuff. I think Disney is aware About whats they publish

It is pretty solid.

"Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), formerly known as The Disney Publishing Group and Buena Vista Publishing Group, is the publishing subsidiary of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.[2] Its imprints include Disney Editions, Disney Press,[3] Kingswell,[4] Freeform, and Hyperion Books for Children.[5] It has creative centers in Glendale, California, and in Milan, Italy.[3]"

they are also the productor editor of the book also , the one that makes the cover. so i think the one in charge of the frozen franchise are actually aware about the existence of A Frozen Heart just like all of their book anyway. The one who said yes or no this is disney itself and they planned their stuff very carefully there are organized. So now imagine we are in some far far away hypotethical future where Hans go back in the franchise ? i just dont think Disney will suddenly let Hans have twins brothers names goerges and lucas. the oldest is alphonse and he got 5 nice brothers and his mom is actually the bitch and his father the loving one. i mean they seems to want to makes thing consistent in this franchise and how they are actually names of kingdoms that are the same in several stuff in the frozen franchise it seems they want to keep stuff faiftful in the franchise at the difference of other franchise like lion king.

The only detail i have see change is Anna horse kjekk who was also name kjekk in one or two others stuff and turn into havski in others material. After checking in october 2013 disney publish a book not wrote by Elizabeth rudnick a junior book where the horse name is kjekk so possible thats why they went for kjekk and thought the times they forgot they had give a name for the horse. But here Thats Anna horse not a whole new character. So that’s why i beleive ( maybe i m wrong ?) that if in some far far faaaaar away future disney want to used Hans family ( the main thing new in a frozen heart because you know the rest...is the movie) they are gonna kept  Caleb , Lars , Rudi , Runo. the name who were used. I think that’s this is most likely that what was for Agnarr would also be for Lars caleb rudi runo if we may to see them one day.🤷‍♀️

I just found that book has its credibility. it is not a independant stuff wrote by.a stranger who told a very different thing that the movie. But thats ok to just dont consider it canon because of disliking stuff in it. I personally didnt like how all the prince of the southern isles were bully to Hans.

[lrgcarter]

Auteur Theory Case Study

Here’s a post about the idea of creation and credit for creation that opens with a bit of a ramble for context, then gets to the actual point, then wraps up without any real conclusions but maybe other people can take my thoughts and find some use for them? Enjoy!

Rambling Context Information

So, many years ago, my brother and I had returned to our parent’s house for Christmas. My brother is a big Doctor Who fan, so we were watching an episode of Never Mind The Buzcocks because David Tennant was the host.

For those unfamiliar with British Old Media, Never Mind The Buzcocks is one of our many ‘fake quiz show’ shows. You throw some comedians and celebrities at a game show set and hope they do something funny and generate some content. Never Mind The Buzcocks is ostensibly a music quiz. But we weren’t watching for the music jokes. We were watching for the Dr Who connection.

At one point, in a moment that I’m sure was definitely not scripted honest, David Tennant turns to a ‘contestant’  celebrity and says ‘I get the feeling you’re not that into music. I also hear from my producer that you are a Dr Who fan. Would you rather be answering questions about Dr Who?” and he throws away his music question cards and pulls out a set of Dr Who question cards. This obviously engages myself and my brother, who also don’t know music but are familiar with Dr Who.

And the first question is “Who invented the Daleks?”

Obviously, my brother and I both shout out “Terry Nation!”

And that brings me to the actual point of this post…

The Actual Point of This Post

Because even as I shouted this answer, I was kicking myself that I didn’t say Ray Cusick. I was on this whole ‘Ray Cusick Was Robbed’ trip at the time.  Like, Terry Nation had got all the credit for years, so all the credit should be taken from him and given to Ray for a bit. Justice spite.

Yep, I was young and foolish. Since then, I have often turned this question over in my mind. It is a question that encourages thought about the collaborative nature of art, and how we both assign and reward credit.

As we all know, Terry Nation wrote the initial Dalek story in 1963. Yes, I know its name[s], don’t test me jerks. Nation somehow managed to get the property rights split between the BBC and himself. Never been clear on how he managed that. This meant he got to write most Dalek stuff from that point onwards. Not just on Dr Who, but also on the Dalek Books and the abortive attempts to make a Dalek spin off series and so on. Even Nu-Who still has to get their Dalek stuff cleared by the Nation estate. So that’s why his name was the first to spring to mind.

But what is a Dalek without the icon design? That’s where Ray Cusick comes in. The design has remained essentially unchanged for over 50 years. It can be recognised in silhouette, which is a thing design folk say is good. The design can be easily extrapolated from to create variations that are still recognisably Daleks, good for world building and merchandising alike. The fact that Ray didn’t get a slice of that property right pie is a great injustice! Hence the immediate regrets!

But there’s still more!

What is a Dalek without its voice? If you’ve ever seen footage of Daleks without the voices processed you’ll know they just look sad. I’m not talking about cosplay Daleks, fans obviously go to great lengths to get good voices. I’m remembering times lackluster Daleks have shown up on Blue Peter and the like. In fairness, the Dalek actors weren’t being paid enough for that. Voice actors like Peter Hawkins and David Graham did their job with their mouths, Brian Hodgson did processing things, and they made a sound that has, again, remained pretty much unchanged to this day. Have you heard how the Cybermen have changed through the years? That Daleks haven’t been through the same mess is proof that the voice people deserve some creation credit.

And let’s circle back to the people in the Daleks not being paid enough! They worked in impossible props, and they made them work. If they hadn’t made them work the Daleks could easily have joined the vast ranks of laughable Dr Who joke villains like the Quarks and that dinosaur horse thing. God damn, that dinosaur horse sounds great until you see it. God damn. Anyway, the people in the props should get a portion of credit.

There’s loads of other people who aren’t even remembered because they weren’t high enough up the production hierarchy. Prop people and stage hands and people who would lay down the little paths that Daleks needed if they were to cross quarry pits etc. And it’s not just the initial creation, it’s also the maintenance of the brand. Long after the various creators have retired and died and shit, plenty of other people are contributing to ‘reinventing’ the Daleks by repeating and refining them. Nicholas Briggs has been voicing the Daleks since before the start of Nu Who, and when they started the BBC folk asked him to bring his own equipment because theirs sucked too hard or something.

And this collaborative work isn’t reflected in the normal attribution of who invented the Daleks. Maybe in fandom encyclopedia entries to a limited extent, but certainly not in terms of actual material recompense. That Terry Nation got half property rights was an injustice. However, I no longer resent him getting that portion of the rights. It is to this day surprising he got any rights! The injustice is not that he got the rights, it’s that none of the other people got their own fraction. I guess that’s the point I’m making? That property rights laws should allow for flatter structures, possibly by first crushing capitalism. I’ll leave the details to other people, but this is maybe a helpful case study that someone doing this sort of media thinking might be able to put into better words?

Lack of Any Real Conclusion

Back on Never Mind The Buzcocks, the celebrity answered ‘Davros’. They were rightly awarded the point.  

[purplesurveys]

919

Alabama: Do you like the movie Forrest Gump? It was okay but it’s not my cup of tea when it comes to movies, so I’ve only watched it the one time. I thought the visual effects were cool - that was my favorite aspect of it.

Alaska: Would you rather deal with 30 days of day or 30 days of night? I would love to try out 30 days of night because I enjoy the night sky more. I’ve seen the 30 days of day thing in the movie The Proposal and it just seems too sunny and bright and it’s not my thing at all.

Arizona: Can you handle heat well? I can handle it, sure; doesn’t mean I like it. I never did. I’m sick of the heat and the sun at this point, and I can say that because we get 32-34ºC for most of the year lol, whereas other places get to have four seasons.

Arkansas: What are your opinions on Bill Clinton? I don’t know enough about him to have an opinion because 1) I had been too young to be aware of his presidency to begin with, and 2) I’m not American. I should be okay with these kinds of questions this one time though given the theme of this survey, haha.

California: Who is your favorite actor? Favorite actress? My favorite actors are Gregory Peck and Eddie Redmayne. Favorite actresses are Audrey Hepburn, Kristen Stewart, Kate Winslet, Jessica Chastain, Natalie Portman, Sandra Bullock, and Emma Stone. OH and Florence Pugh.

Colorado: Do you smoke weed? What are your opinions on its legalization? No. And it’s a super taboo topic here so there’s rarely a chance to get all debate-y and discussion-y about in a healthy arena because there’ll always be at least that one Bible-reading person who ruins everything for everyone by using biblical quotes and metaphors in their argument. I’ll have to read more about it to know its pros and cons, but I think that its legalization would be a responsible thing to go with.

Connecticut: Have you ever had a school shooting at your school? No. I’ve never heard of a school shooting in any school in my country, ever.

Delaware: Are you usually the first to do something, or are you more of a follower? I definitely follow the lead more. Even if I’m the first to do something in a given situation, that likely only happened because I followed a lot of advice from my friends so even in that aspect I’m still following what people think is best for me, lol.

Florida: Have you ever been to Disney World? I have not.

Georgia: Would you consider yourself a southern belle? No but for a long time I had the biggest crush on Melanie Hamilton from Gone With the Wind, who was considered the quintessential southern belle. Olivia de Havilland took that character to ridiculous heights, man.

Hawaii: What would be paradise for you? Going someplace with a lot of museums and street food.

Idaho: What is your favorite way to eat a potato? French friiiiiies.

Illinois: Did you vote for President Obama (or would you have)? I would have, yes.

Indiana: Do you like corn? Sure. I don’t like it when it’s incorporated into other food though, like cornbread or some brands of corn chips. I just like good ol’ corn on the cob.

Iowa: Are roses your favorite flower? It’s one of them.

Kansas: Do you like the Tin Man, Scarecrow or Cowardly Lion better? I’ve never seen Wizard of Oz. Not my cup of tea when it comes to movie plots. If I absolutely had to watch it it’ll only be for Judy Garland lol.

Kentucky: Have you ever been to a horse race? Nope, doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy.

Louisiana: Have you ever celebrated Mardi Gras? No. I never knew what it celebrates, actually. I do have a soft spot for New Orleans’ culture though; it seems very colorful and more interesting than other US cultures, and I heard their food slaps as well. If I ever end up in Louisiana at the right time, I’d love to take a look at how they celebrate Mardi Gras.

Maine: Do you like lobster? It’s good, but it’s expensive so I don’t get to have it a lot. I’m okay with crab.

Maryland: Have you ever been to Washington DC? No...WTF Washington DC is not in Washington? I never knew that and now I feel so dumb. Holy shit, hahahaha

Massachusetts: Are you smart enough to go to Harvard? I can try. I know a lot of mutual friends who at least took a program there.

Michigan: Have you ever swam in a lake? I don’t think so.

Minnesota: Have you seen Drop Dead Gorgeous? No I haven’t.

Mississippi: Do you follow college football? No; I don’t follow our local collegiate football games either. Never really been a fan of the sport and I’d rather watch basketball and volleyball.

Missouri: Have you ever convinced someone to show you their private parts? ...can someone explain why this is the question for Missouri lol. Anyway no, that’s pretty messed up.

Montana: What is the greatest treasure you have ever found? A copy of WWE Encyclopedia 1/4 of its original price, sitting at one of the very top shelves in a used books store that I regularly visit.

Nebraska: Do you eat beef? Yep, pretty regularly.

Nevada: Are you good at card games? No, and not very interested in them either.

New Hampshire: What are your views on gay marriage? No one should have a problem with it. I wish it were legal here, but I know we’ll never see it at least in this country. We can’t even get divorce, how the hell are we getting same-sex marriage passed?

New Jersey: Do you watch The Jersey Shore? I watched the first episode but being a 12 year old, it was too explicit and uncomfortable for me.

New Mexico: Would you consider yourself a hippie? Not at all.

New York: Have you ever been to New York City? Would you like to? No. Yes.

North Carolina: Are the Panthers your favorite football team? I don’t like football.

North Dakota: Have you seen Fargo? Nah but it’s been on my watchlist for yearsssssss. Just never got around to it.

Ohio: Did you watch The Drew Carey Show? Nopes.

Oklahoma: What is your favorite musical? Miss Saigon.

Oregon: Did you ever play the Oregon Trail game? No. Never heard of it.

Pennsylvania: Do you watch It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia? I don’t, but I’d love to get started on it. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the show.

Rhode Island: Who is the smallest person you know? The youngest person I know of (making him the smallest, I guess) is my third cousin Jethro. He turned 2 this year.

South Carolina: Do you think Aziz Ansari is funny? I know him but I’ve never seen his material.

South Dakota: Who is more interesting: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln? All of these people are a blank slate to me considering I know very little about each of them. But if I had to pick a book to read about these four, I’d go with Lincoln. I feel like you had to have done very intriguing things to be assassinated while watching a play, so I’d like to know more about his life and his views.

Tennessee: Who is your favorite country singer? I don’t have any.

Texas: Do you like barbecue or Tex-Mex better? Tex-Mex.

Utah: Do you know anyone who is Mormon? Not in real life, but I’ve read of famous personalities who are.

Vermont: Do you get the full autumnal colors in the fall where you live? No, no autumn here.

Virginia: Are you a virgin? Nopes.

Washington: Do you like grunge? It’s alright.

West Virginia: Do you like the mountains? Sure. I’d love to travel somewhere with great mountain views...I think it’s why I enjoyed Sagada a lot.

Wisconsin: What's your favorite kind of cheese? FETAAAAAAAAA. Love mozzarella on pizza too.

Wyoming: Do you love westerns? Eh, I can’t say that. The only western I ever enjoyed was Breaking Bad.

[fataziraphale]

The Best and Wisest Man Whom I Have Ever Known (A Good Omens Secret Santa)

Happy holidays, @ditherwings!!! I was your Good Omens Secret Santa! I had oodles of fun writing this—I too adore literary history and Aziraphale being a dork. You have excellent taste! I hope your holidays are wonderful and you enjoy this offering from me.

When Aziraphale sent a letter to cancel their dinner plans, Crowley dropped a potted plant in shock, scattering ceramic shards all over his kitchen floor. Aziraphale never turned down the Café Royal. He relished in running into all those authors he was fond of, like the unsettlingly tall one who flirted a bit too much for Crowley’s taste. Plus—and this generally piqued Aziraphale’s interest even more—their French patisserie was to die for.

Perhaps more alarming, Aziraphale’s elegantly looped handwriting announced he was cancelling dinner because he was currently in mourning.

In mourning? For a human, then? It didn’t seem in-character. Among their other arrangements, Crowley and Aziraphale had made a pact, some drunken night in 1431, that they weren’t going to love any specific humans. Sure, it was all right for Aziraphale to go the salons and debate the merits of various magazine poems, or be on a first-name basis with his local baker. It was another matter entirely for him to become attached.

It all got too messy. They’d agreed on that. They’d practically emptied out a winery after Boccaccio died—Aziraphale because the man had made such incredible contributions to the literary canon, Crowley because he’d inspired a whole generation of women to take up masturbating, but both because Giovanni was a friend. They knew what happened to humans after they died, they knew the man’s soul would live on until at least Armageddon, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they would miss him, and they couldn’t keep going on like this, becoming blubbery messes incapable of doing their duties every time a good drinking buddy got ill. So they’d decided not to. They’d promised.

So then who the dev—who was Aziraphale mourning now?

Miffed at Aziraphale going back on his word (and certainly not worried about the angel, don’t be daft), Crowley fetched his hat and coat and set off into the streets of London. Carriages crowded the road, humans weaving in and out of the foggy air. Crowley flagged a cab and rattled off Aziraphale’s address, tapping his foot against the carriage floor as it bumped against the cobblestones.

It was awfully inconvenient, relying on humans for transport, but he had never been particularly good with horses. He’d read in the paper about a German woman who’d traveled a great distance in some sort of horseless carriage. He’d been thinking of heading to the continent to see what the fuss was for himself. He wondered if Aziraphale would like to come along—they could go hear that new Brahms piano thing everyone and their mother raved about.

But no. Aziraphale was in mourning.

Not for the first time, Crowley wondered if it wasn’t simply a euphemism. If Aziraphale wasn’t angry with Crowley but too polite to say so. Sure, they’d had that tiff in the 60s over holy water, but Crowley had thought they’d patched things up. He’d bought Aziraphale his weight in apology chocolate. So what could be the matter now?

Yet as he exited the cab onto Aziraphale’s street, Crowley couldn’t help but notice a pattern: young men sporting black armbands. Yes, there were bucketloads of them—this one hurrying into his apartment, that one buying flowers from a stand on the roadside, those two comforting a weeping woman. Crowley remembered himself just enough to push one mourner into the street, making sure to do so when no carriages where heading his way.

The bookshop was closed, but that was normal for Tuesdays. Crowley rang the bell and, when no one answered, willed the knob to turn.

The angel Aziraphale sat his desk, sniffling over a copy of The Strand.

Crowley stared at him. Indeed, Aziraphale did appear to be mourning—he wore a black crêpe around his upper arm, and another adorned the hat hanging on his hat stand. He put down the magazine with a sigh that came from the very depths of his soul, if angels had that sort of thing (Crowley wasn’t entirely sure). He removed his spectacles from his nose, tucked them into his pocket, and caught eyes with Crowley across the room.

“Oh, my dear boy,” Aziraphale murmured. “You’ve read it, haven’t you? Do sit down. Would you like some tea? No, you’ll likely need something stronger.”

Mystified, Crowley lowered himself into a chair, stopping first to lift a heap of books off its seat and onto the floor. “Read what? I saw the men in the streets. Who died? Is it someone important?” His eyes widened. “They didn’t catch that friend of yours, did they? That author who wears all those gaudy green flowers?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Oscar is perfectly sound, though I’m not sure A Woman of No Importance was his tightest work. Perhaps he should stick with prose rather than drama.”

“Then what’s this about? Someone from your gentleman’s club? No, it’s got to be some famous bugger if everyone’s gutted about it.” Crowley cast his eyes around for inspiration. “It’s not the Queen. I would have heard if it were the bloody Queen.”

Aziraphale drew a handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes. Crowley had never known Aziraphale to be a crier, but now he was getting the disturbing impulse to start saying things like “There, there” and “It’ll all be all right in the end.”

“He was a great man,” said Aziraphale. “Perhaps Britain’s finest. Crowley, I simply don’t know how I will go on without him.”

Crowley had already reached across the desk for Aziraphale’s hand before he remembered he was supposed to be a demon. “I thought we said we weren’t going to do this. Not after Joan. We weren’t going to get close to humans.”

“Oh, he and I aren’t close. Goodness, though, I should think I’m going to write the man a very stern letter. You simply can’t go playing with people’s emotions like that!”

“It probably wasn’t his fault,” Crowley said. “You know, dying. Humans tend to do it whether they want to or not.”

“But humans can choose not to murder a beloved cultural figure!”

This caught Crowley’s attention. Murder wasn’t always the work of his side, but it was certainly more in his wheelhouse than the angel’s.

“Do you want revenge, angel?” Crowley tried his best to snarl, but his tone came out more like sympathy. “Because I can help you with that. I can turn the murderer’s… undergarments into ants. I don’t know, give me time to think of something really devious, I’m a bit rusty.”

“Perhaps you could write him a letter too,” said Aziraphale, and then his eyes lit up. Something inside him clicked, and a smile lifted his chubby cheeks to Heaven—just as it had when he’d first tried bread back in Mesopotamia, or last week when he’d showed off his charmingly bad gavotte.

“We could start a movement,” Aziraphale gushed. Crowley’s heart, despite not strictly needing to beat, threatened to give out altogether. “Yes, I believe we could! One letter might not sway the man, but twenty? Fifty? One hundred? We could rally the men in the streets! Tape up posters in Trafalgar Square! I could make a picket sign! I’ve always wanted to make a picket sign.” He stood up, raising a triumphant fist as he glared righteously at a stack of encyclopedias. “Why, if we put enough pressure on the man, he’ll have to cave! He’ll bring the dead back to life in no time at all!”

“Er,” said Crowley. “I’m not sure that’s how that works.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. If anyone can think of a way to bring back the world’s greatest detective, it’s Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle.”

“Why would this Conan Doyle bloke kill a detective? Did he do a crime he wants covered up? Does the detective owe him money?”

“What? Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale chuckled. Crowley could feel his cheeks growing pink for at least three reasons. “Sherlock Holmes is fictional. He’s Doyle’s literary creation.” He frowned. “I gave you The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes last Christmas. Did you not read it?”

Crowley stared. “Do you mean to tell me, all this time, you’ve been planning to skip out on dinner because you’re mourning someone fictional?”

“He’s a very good detective.”

“I don’t believe this! Angel, I thought you were actually depressed!”

“I am depressed!” Aziraphale scoffed. “And it’s perfectly reasonable to be affected by literature! Why, just last year, I closed my bookshop for a month to recover from The Picture of Dorian Gray!”

“I thought you just didn’t fancy dealing with customers!”

“And you, my dear.” Aziraphale jabbed a finger in his direction. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you! 1806 BC! You cried after reading The Epic of Gilgamesh! At seeing the humans’ first attempt at truly great literature!”

“Angel, those were tears of laughter! That guy Enkidu had a hard-on for two bloody weeks! Could you keep a straight face reading that?”

“There’s no need to be crass.” Aziraphale coughed into his handkerchief, but Crowley could recognize those upturned lips anywhere. “Anyway, I’m hardly alone in this. Plenty of readers lived for the Holmes stories. It’s a true pity there won’t be any more.”

“Good. Oodles of angry humans. Doyle did my job for me.” Crowley was already mentally drafting a very threatening letter. Naming the man’s children should do the trick. In the off-chance he didn’t have any children, well, the replacing Doyle’s undergarments with ants idea was growing on him.

“But you see, this is why I mustn’t go to dinner with you.” Aziraphale assumed his most sincere expression. “It would be disrespectful to be seen lavishly dining and carrying on when such a tragedy has befallen the literary world. Why, none of my friends there would let me hear the end of it.” He gazed forlornly into an empty mug, rimmed around the top with cocoa stains.

“What about lunch?”

Aziraphale’s head snapped up. “Oh, excellent. I’m simply starving. And a man must eat. No one could blame me for that.”

Crowley’s mouth curled into a devilish grin. He held out his hand, and Aziraphale took it. “I won’t tell any of your author friends if you don’t bring up me and Gilgamesh.”

“Perhaps only in private.”

“It’s a funny poem! The bloke had sex for two weeks!”

“Ah, that reminds me. If you truly don’t want your first edition Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, may I have it back? It would make an excellent addition to my collection.”

“You devious bastard. You only bought me that bloody book because you wanted it.”

Crowley weaved between dusty stacks of hardbacks and emerged blinking onto the Soho street. Remembering the mourner with his arm around his compatriot, Crowley vaguely thought of putting an arm around Aziraphale.

But that wasn’t the way their love language worked. Crowley’s love was showing up. Was badgering Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle to a bloody pulp until he brought Sherlock Holmes back to life, logic be damned. Was giving Aziraphale an excuse to pig out on French pastry. Was hailing a cab and taking Aziraphale’s hand to pull him up inside.

As Aziraphale’s plushy hip pressed into Crowley’s, he thought of the new electric lights they’d shown off at the Paris Exposition. He could feel that current now, running through the angel’s body into his.

He realized Aziraphale had only broken his promise if their pact not to love humans extended to fictional ones. At any rate, if it included falling in love with angels, Crowley was in an awful lot of trouble, and he owed Aziraphale about £15.

Perhaps some promises were made to be broken.

[frillshark-fr]

anyways time to go nuts over some of the dragons that have been added since i last logged in

what thE FUCK is that. HOW IS THAT NOT A RARE??? i NEED it

I LOVLE THIS THING??? THE PIXEL ART ON THIS GUY IS SO GOOD WHAT THE HELL... dragcave art can be hit-or-miss imo but honestly the longer the game goes on the more amazing the art’s gotten. aranoras were added like, december??? and theyre FANTASTIC art 10/10 I hope this spriter (Dohaerys, according to the wiki) continues working w/ DC

CORAL THEMED PYGMY!! LITTLE TINY WYVERN!!! I WANNA KISS IT

THIS IS SUCH A PRETTY PYGMY OMG I ... love pygmies so much. fair warning most of the things im gushing over in this post are gonna be more pygmies

THIS ONE ,,,,,  I think its sprite is pretty cool but i read its lore earlier and im,, losing my mind. ITS JUST EVIL??? ITS JUST STRAIGHT UP MEAN FOR NO REASON???? ITS TINY BODY IS COMPLETELY FUELED BY HATRED. Pygmies are supposedly the size of “domesticated animals” but that could mean. anything from Goldfish Sized to Horse Size and yeah the encyclopedia says Kovoses are large for a pygmy i’m gonna say they’re the size of a cat

I NEED A MILLION

I NEED A  BILLION

Rift wyrms are weird because at first glance their sprite is... very hard to read and it just looked like Noise until my eyes focused on what actually was happening kjhsdfsd BUT THEYRE FUCKING BADASS ANYWAYS

THIS IS ANOTHER ONE IM REALLY EXCITED TO SEE MORE ART FROM THE SPRITER... apparently this artist, Mewtie, also made Pipios (the very soft-looking white pygmies I need a billion of) and i just... LOVE this pixel style. Tercorns are GORGEOUS and I NEED SO MFUCKIGN MANY

[theladymorganlefay]

🤝A Spell to Restore Friendship🤝

Maples, horse chestnuts, mistletoe and ash trees have long been used to restore peace where quarrels have broken out. If you can find one that is divided just above the base of the trunk so you can climb through it with little difficulty, all the better.

Materials:

An old scarf long enough to go around to the tree

Holding the scarf in your hand, pass through the cleft in the tree nine timea counter clockwise, saying:

Where there is pain,

Let friendship now reign.

And let it be done, that it harm no one

If you cannot climb through the tree, simply walk around it.

Now past the scarf through the cleft in the tree nine times clockwise, saying:

May bitterness end,

And ill feelings mend

And let it be done, that it harms no one

Now look to scarf right around the tree and tie three knots to bind the ends together. As you tie the knots, say:

Knot one, sorrow end

Knot two, be us friend

Knot three, heal the pain

Let love flow again

And let it be done, that it harms no one

After you have thanked the tree for its grace, make your way home and ask yourself if there's any reason not to make a gesture of reconciliation towards the person with whom you have quarreled.

And even if you think there is, why not ignore it and make one anyway?

*************************************************

Found in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Spells by Michael Johnstone

[granny-griffin]

tumbling forward we spin on 2/4

Avariya broke the window of her father's apartment with a loose brick she'd found in the courtyard. After climbing gingerly over the broken glass she went to the kitchen and rummaged around for the junk drawer. They were there. She snatched up the scissors, marched straight to the bathroom, and began cutting her hair off at the scalp.

There were five memories from her time alone that would stick out. No matter how faded her childhood grew in her old age, these five scenes stayed vivid. She couldn't have told you why. But this moment—standing alone in front of the mirror, chopping piece after piece until her head was bare except for a vague white fuzz—this moment would become the first of them.

[This is part two—read part one first. Thanks @masterfuldoodler for teaching me how to put links in posts.]

The second occurred a few weeks later. She had been scrounging dinner from the other apartments on the compound. One night she ran into somebody else who had the same idea. Frightened out of her wits, Avariya scampered out of the compound, down the street, and in the door of the first building that wasn't locked. It was a museum. For a moment she thought she was safe, and then she heard footsteps. A whole band of marauders was prowling through the halls, probably attracted by the various treasures which had been suddenly abandoned. Avariya grabbed a short sword from a nearby display and huddled behind a giant stone sarcophagus with weird runes scratched all over it. Somehow she knew that she was just like all the things on display. If someone were to come and steal her, there wouldn't be anything she could do about it, sword or no sword.

She crouched there all night. Nobody noticed her.

The third was in winter. It didn't snow, but the rain was coming down in sheets. By then she knew to stay away from buildings when she could. Where there were buildings there were people. But it was cold and wet, so she did the stupid thing and ducked into a doorway that looked relatively nonthreatening. Inside she found a nice spot to sit and drip water onto the floor. She was hungry, but she couldn't think of anything she could do to get food. Huddled there against the stone was she looked up and saw them—rows and rows of books.

Shakily, Avariya got to her feet and began to walk along the rows. She moved faster and faster until she was running from shelf to shelf, reading the labels on the ends of the aisles. Action Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance...these were all fictional. She turned and ran to the other side of the library. There were other categories here; Biography, Book Reviews, Encyclopedias, Guides—she skidded to a halt. This had to be it. She walked down the Guides aisle and began skimming the book titles. Methods for Tidying up Your Life, Tips on Making Friends and Being Popular, How to Read Books—and then she saw it, just above her eye level, thick and faded. An Adventurer's Guide to Survival in the British Countryside. She snatched it off the shelf and flipped through the pages. There were sections on edible plants, simple traps, field dressing game, shelter construction, and so many more. Avariya slid to the floor and started to cry. This was it—this was how she was going to survive.

The next moment was months later. She'd gathered up enough confidence to start raiding buildings again. This one had already collapsed in on itself, so she didn't need to worry about it collapsing while she was inside. She had found some pretty useful things in the rubble (three cans of tuna, a sash she could hang her sword off of, and a spool of thread she could use to mend her clothes and pack) when she lifted up a loose board and saw a handheld radio.

It was a cool gadget, but it wasn't useful anymore. Nobody was broadcasting anything these days. She picked it up anyway and began fiddling with the dials. Suddenly she heard a voice. She dropped the radio and spun around—who was here? She'd thought she was alone.

When the voice came again, this time from her feet, she knew it was the radio.

That night she found a nice spot by the Thames, turned the radio on, and listened until the dawn was pink in the sky. There was only one station—the city of London's official broadcast. England may have fallen, but the city of London had a power structure that had been around since time immemorial and it wasn't planning on going anywhere anytime soon. In the time since the ships had left they'd set up a militia force to guard the farms.

It took Avariya a bit to figure that one out. Around midnight, someone named Linda got on the air and explained—so many people from the British Isles had left Earth that the whole infrastructure gone down. Which meant nobody was supplying the supermarkets. Linda had packed her bags and used the rest of the gas in her car to high tail it out of town. She stopped at the nearest abandoned farm and began to care for the stray animals roaming the area. She now had 38 chickens, 29 ducks, 3 cows, 10 cats, an herb garden, and a goat. Things had been tough for a while what with the raiders and all, but now that the city of London had sent out the militia force to make sure that the food raised by people like her stayed not stolen long enough to make it to a market, she wasn't having any trouble bringing in an income. Now she just needed to figure out how to keep the goat from eating the rosemary. 

Avariya laid her head back on the grass. She could see the stars so much better now that the power was out most places. The radio droned on. It was nice to hear so many voices—each of them telling a story. She hadn't realized how lonely she was. And now she had a secret between her and the stars. All the unwanted ones were here—they were still here—still living like nothing had happened. Maybe it was hard, but it was good. Despite everything, there was still good in the world.

She went to London that autumn. She'd heard adds on the radio—there was a blacksmith there who wanted some particular kinds of scrap metal—bits of electronics too. Avariya had found them and she was ready to collect the reward. And to have a conversation. She hadn't been around people in over a year. 

The outer city was still—buses stood idle and there were no pedestrians to speak of. Even the birds seemed to have disappeared. It was beautiful in an eerie sort of way. Then she rounded a corner and saw it—just down the street in front of her was a statue of a dragon, marking the entrance to London proper. Behind that was life. There were people walking around between booths and street-side shops. Lanterns were strung up on wires that zig-zagged between the alley walls, and a smell of spice hung in the crispness of the air. She walked down the street in a daze. She hadn't known a city could feel so warm. It was like a fairy world come true. Just then she glanced up and saw another of the dragon statues guarding the border of the city, perched on the ledge of a building.

It moved.

Avariya looked away, blinked a few times, and looked back at the dragon statue. It was staring at her. She felt her heart thump harder and harder as it jumped down into the street before her. Now that it was in the light, she could see that it wasn't grey or silver or gold like a statue should be, but bright orangish red. Avariya stood as if she had been the statue as the creature hopped onto a nearby crate of vegetables, took a big bite of the nearest one, and immediately spit it out. This might have been comical—except the spit was on fire, and the fire caught onto the crates.

Somebody, probably the vegetable vendor, bumped Avariya's shoulder as he ran past with a water bottle and immediately poured it onto the crates. This didn't help particularly, and it got the creature all wet. Enraged, it reached up and bit the vegetable vendor on the hand. 

A gun went off behind her. Startled out of her trance, Avariya spun around. The first creature had been the size of a small dog—the one standing in the road behind her was at least as tall as a horse—it should have been bright red, but parts of it were all covered in a strange green liquid which made it look sort of brown. A militia member stood a few yards off with his rifle trained on the larger creature. It growled—a deep, unearthly noise—and spat flame at the gunman. It missed the man and hit the building behind him, which also caught on fire.

Avariya turned and ran. She probably should have a long time ago. Nobody was milling about on the street anymore, and there were strange shadows dancing on the ground, as if a thousand different kinds of birds were swooping around above the city. Avariya didn't look up to see what was casting them.

Suddenly her foot caught on something and she hit the ground hard. A hand grabbed her shoulder and flipped her onto her back. Standing over her was yet another creature, this one a deep purpley black, with eyes that shone white like a spotlight. Without thinking, Avariya drew her sword and held it out at the creature with as much menace as she could muster. Shockingly, it stepped back. Keeping the sword pointed at the creature, Avariya slowly got to her feet. The creature just stood there, blinking its unnaturally bright eyes. She stepped backwards slowly until she was at a somewhat safe distance, then she turned and ran again. 

She ran down the first underground entrance she saw. None of the trains were running, so she jumped down onto the track and kept running. The sky couldn't reach her here, and she was too terrified to realize that it was creepy down here, alone in the dark. 

When she couldn't run anymore, she walked to the next station and went back up to the surface. She was somewhere in London's suburbs. It was night, but she could still see around her. There was a sort of glow to everything. It was strange. She didn't think the moon was full just now, but she looked around for it anyway. 

Then she saw the sky behind her. Back towards the inner city, beyond the inky black silhouettes of the surrounding buildings, the sky was bright with color. Orange and grey and yellow and white spread out from the ground like a painted sunset. She didn't know it yet, but the image would stick with her forever—the fifth vivid memory of her time alone. London was burning.

[part 3]

[davidmann95]

Reviews?

I assume this is for weekly comics reviews - I got this a bit ago during a week that didn’t have much to offer in terms of things to say, but this past Wednesday most definitely had some stuff worth reflecting on, one in particular. Spoilers, inevitably.

DCeased #3: So people think Superman killed Pa at the end of this one? I just saw him as fusing the lock shut, which admittedly would kill him unless a cure is found, but it’s not like he blew his damn head off the way people are saying. Anyway, fine, but certainly not as good as the first couple issues.

The Adventures of the Super Sons #12: A decent conclusion to a decent book.

Sea of Stars #1: One of the three rare Dark Horse purchases this week, and frankly? Quite a disappointing one. Aaron’s clearly not on scripting duties, and the others involved failed to grab my attention.

No One Left To Fight #1: This one on the other hand? Probably my shock fave for the week, absolutely living up to its high concept. For most of you who probably haven’t heard of it, it’s an unabashed Dragon Ball riff asking what happens to Goku after…well, the title happens, and it’s colorful and energetic and emotional, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing where this goes.

The World of Black Hammer Encyclopedia: I read the first year of this book out of the library some time ago and liked it quite a bit; I grabbed this because my dad’s interested in Black Hammer/Justice League so it’d be good to have a refresher, and because I always enjoy these sorts of infodumps. Couple clever twists with this one and a number of really solid artists involved, so even if you’re not a reader of the title, if you’re as up for a high-concept download as me this one’s worth plopping down a few bucks for.

Justice League #27: Aw shit yeah, gimmie those Final Crisis references and Superman being great bits. And Javier Fernandez is turning out to be a Travel Foreman on Ultimates2-level “I already knew this artist was amazing, but never in a million years would I have guessed this was a type of project they’d be such a perfect fit for” revelation.

Ms. Marvel Annual #1: Decent enough, liked that one guy’s name.

Secret Warps: Soldier Supreme Annual #1: The closest I think I’ve ever seen to Al Ewing phoning it in? It’s still charming as hell, and I suspect this’ll get better as it goes along, but this is one of the only comics I’ve read from him where I get the sense that he’s writing it purely as A Gig rather than something he’ll elevate by sheer force of will.

The Immortal Hulk #20: This, on the other hand, was beautifully true to form. AND THAT ENDING.

Lois Lane #1: Ruled, and in ways I’m surprised DC let Rucka and Perkins get away with.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #46: This is still a functionally perfect comic.

The Wild Storm #24: This felt really sudden and blunt to the point of almost perfunctory, but in a way that Ellis endings often do? And in a way that was considerably more satisfying than usual, especially given there’s more immediately on the horizon between his WildC.A.T.s with Villalobos and an inevitable The Authority relaunch.

The Green Lantern #9: Give me a Superwatch book right this instant.

Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds #1: Yeahyeahyeah!!! This feels incredibly different from the first ‘year’, but while I think I preferred the overall vibe of that one, the execution here might be even more up my alley. Very much looking forward to wherever this one’s going.

Superman: Up In The Sky #1: So I didn’t actually pick this up, but that’s because I’ve been grabbing the Walmart giants so I saw these awhile ago. I could have sworn I wrote something on the first half of this when it initially hit shelves, but I dug it just fine, it taps into a bit of Golden Age/80s flavor and feels relatively gritty while still distinctly, iconically Superman. The second half, however, is at least in the running for my favorite Superman story of the last 5 years.

I’ll admit, part of this is probably because, since I saw the first two pages of this in an online preview originally and therefore when I picked up the actual copy I sort of skimmed those and jumped right into it, the trick caught me a little more by surprise than most. But fundamentally, Just Luck is the best answer to the last decade-plus of Superman stories I think we’ve seen, doing everything - to cite the most prominent example - Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice tried and failed to do with him as a character in 12 pages. It’s Superman grappling with the question of whether he realistically does more harm than good in a way that looks like the most unpleasant, gut-churning, Tom King-on-his-worst-days-ish way possible way of exploring the concept, only to turn on its head as it becomes clear this is instead the most Grant Morrison Superman story that guy never wrote. Moreover, it takes the whole detached, stuffy ‘Superman deals with the ramifications of being a god’ borderline-meaningless abstraction that’s gotten so much wind under its sails and grounds it in the struggle we all face to reckon with the imposing scope and complexity of the world we live in and how to do right within it, only for Superman to find helping others to of course be the light that guides him through - because while as noted on the last page, while he might not be infallible, when someone needs him, he’s going to be there. It takes every dumb major Superman story of the 21st century and finally squeezes out the diamond so many others were sure was just waiting to be found within the coal, and it’s because of that I think it’s easily in the top 5 Superman stories since Morrison left Action, and very possibly the best of that lot period.

[wickedlittlecritta]

Prompt #3:  Garden, Teeth, Bright

"Is there a difference between a maze and a labyrinth?"

"Mazes have a separate entrance and exit. Labyrinths don't," I said. The old landscape garden matched the old manor house it belonged to for levels if shabbiness and neglect, and the fact that the manor was settled in the midst of wild moors made it look all the smaller and more haunted.

And it was even more haunted than it looked.

"Is this a maze or a labyrinth?" Julie asked, peering into the passage between two massive rosemary hedges.

"Maze, probably. They're more common in England, I think." Julie raised an eyebrow at me.

"You say that like they just grow of their own accord."

"Are we sure they don't?"

Julie frowned at me. "I'm going in."

"Have fun."

"Coward."

"Oh absolutely," I agreed. She stuck her tongue out at me and went into the maze.

And I waited outside. Alone. While rain threatened the moorlands around me. "Julie?" I called after a moment. I peered into the maze. Nothing but shadows and silence and the overwhelming perfume of rosemary.

"Shit," I said, and followed after her. I'd never hear the end of it if I lost her in a hedge maze. I was still hearing about losing her at a horse race, and that was ten years ago.

It took me a while to realize anything was off about the maze. I'm half in the Gray at the best of times, right? And it came on slow. Just a whisper, a feeling, a color that wasn't right. There was a breeze that didn't rustle the hedges so cold it bit into my bones. The sky overhead slipped from slate clouds to an inky black night studded with stars.

"This is...weird," the Grim murmured, following me with a solidness he rarely had out of the Gray.

"What the fuck happened here to make a place like this?" 

He shrugged.

"Julie!" I called, and my voice felt thin and wispy, like a cloud torn apart by the wind. I swallowed and called again, imagining my voice carrying through the rosemary. "Julie! Julianna Knockwood!"

"Devin?" she called back.

I found her frowning at the ground, hands on her hips. She shimmered, sometimes a girl in black overalls and big boots, sometimes shrouded in a mantle of crow feathers and a crow skull mask. I wondered if I did the same when she looked at me, and what form Nettle took. Rabbit skull? Betta fins? Jay feathers?

"Thought you were a coward," she said.

"I am," I said. "What the entire fuck is this place?"

"I don't know."

"It was a rhetorical question."

"You know I'm bad at those."

"I know, you goddamned encyclopedia."  I joined her and looked down too. 

"What are we—ah. I see."

The earth was full of bones.

Some were human. Some were only mostly human. The teeth gave them away.

"We should go," I said.

"They aren't doing anything."

"Yet."

I didn't have to tell her that the dead didn't always stay quiet. She knew as well as I did.

Julie looked at me, dark eyes bright behind her skull mask. "What's the point of being a shadowcatcher if you run away from a pile of bones?"

"I'm not worried about the bones. I'm worried about the things they turned into."

Cowards live longer, and I'm still working on my self-preservation skills.

"Devin," the Grim whispered anxiously.

There were so many goddamned teeth.

A skull with an elongated mouth like a wolf near my foot rattled.

“Of course,” I said.

Julie drew her sword.

“Oh, come on.”

It wasn’t the bones that came for us, but the things they turned into. I hate being right sometimes. It was a massive thing, a mess of darkness and gaping mouths and glinting teeth.

“You had to go in the fucking maze,” I said, and pulled my bow from my back.

“Shut up,” Julie said, and dove right in.

“Doesn’t she know it’s a bad idea to get in front of you?” the Grim asked.

“Yes. Does she care? No.” I aimed over her and shot, catching one of the wide mouths. The thing whined and shook, and lashed out at us with its many many mouths.

“Get it off the bones!” I called. I couldn’t tell if Julie heard me or not, but she pressed into the creature anyway, and I kept firing arrows that vanished into the murk of the thing. Julie drove her sword up and into it, where its heart could have been, and it screamed, stumbling back.

My big old officer’s coat had many, many pockets, and I reached into one and pulled out a bottle of salt. It smelled like the lagoon when I unstoppered it, like the kitchen had when Armand had made it for me, wide and dark and deep. I spread it over the bones and then replaced it and reached into another pocket.

How do you kill a spirit? With salt and fire and spirits of your own.

The thing turned several mouths on me to hiss and squeal when I dumped vodka over the bones over the salt.

“I know,” I said, lighting a match. “I’m a big ol’ bastard.”

Its voice was very, very human when it screamed, going up in flames. Julie stood next to me by the bones as they turned into a pyre.

“Maybe we should get out of the maze before we burn it down?” Julie suggested after a moment of silence.

“This is why you’re the smart one,” I said.

[chandelierslayer]

Y’know, there are a lot of narrative choices and tropes that I outright hate with a fiery passion. Veritable plateaus of text have been dedicated to pointing out why and how stories that use them can be made better. And “super bloodlines” or whatever you want to call it, is one of the biggest offenders. It irritates me to no end when writers can’t let their person be special on their own merit. Everyone has to be connected to some kind of magical bloodline. This hero was able to vanquish the hero because they’re from a long line of special people. This woman can talk to the planet and she’s the ONLY ONE who can because it’s a thing only her race can do, and the rest of her race is dead. This villain was inevitably going to become the sixth ranger because they belong to bloodline that is always Good™ or is SURPRISE! the sibling of one of the heroes. This horse is more BEAUTIFUL and SPECIAL than all the other horses because it’s the descendant of the horse ridden by a PRINCESS (really???). Yeah. You get my drift. 

But when bloodlines are (actually or just hinted at being) in the backdrop of a story, with no special privileges bestowed because of it, I don’t mind. So when I was examining the maps of A Link to the Past and The Minish Cap together (which I originally only did to look for similarities between those two and the LoZ map, hi, welcome to how we do things around here, my trails of thought are split ends and those split ends have split ends and you get it) and trying to find more than a few similarities to back up two of my previous theories (I need help, somebody throw down a rope), and I found something that made me throw them off of the stove completely, I wasn’t at all bothered by the idea of the two little dudes who make the Master Sword red being descended from Minish Cap Link. Instead, I just used that thought to further fuel my digging into the theory I’ll lay out before you. 

Now, with that absurdly long and unnecessary intro out of the way, I hope you enjoy. XD

Picture, if you will, a cozy little house surrounded by trees. It’s also a smithy, where the sound of metalworking can be heard from closeby. To the west of this house is a body of water stretching from North to South. If you walk North of the house, you’ll eventually come across a road that runs from East to West. Not far Northwest from that point, you’ll find a place called the Lost Woods. 

Now, what did I just describe? The home of Smith and his grandson? Or the home of two tiny blacksmiths who helped the Hero of Legend stop the Cataclysm by strengthening the blade of evil’s bane? 

And no, no, no, don’t worry, I’m not asking you to believe that the Lost Woods in ALttP is the same as the “Lost Woods” South of the Royal Valley in TMC. That would be silly, right? Hahaaa. No. I’m asking you to believe that it’s part of it. The Northwestern part, that is. Sort of. Around that area. Look, if some of these map theorists out here can swivel maps diagonally and flip them completely around to make them fit together, I can be vague about some thick woods, okay? (No hate, I love you guys, keep doing what you’re doing) *ahem* So yeah. 

Let’s zoom out from that tiny scenario I was describing earlier. The idea is that the first Hyrule Castle¹ is around the area where the “Bumpkin Family” house and the Eastern part of the Lost Woods is. North Hyrule Field would be South of that, and Hyrule Town, whether you want it to be the same as or separate from OoT’s Castle Town, would be just South of that (the road running East to West, under the fortune teller’s place, would be the same road as the one just South of the town gate in TMC)

Yes, this means that ALttP’s Kakariko is where the Trilby Highlands/Western Wood used to be (and a little bit where TMC’s Hyrule Town is), which ALSO means that Wind Ruins, Castor Wilds, and Mt. Crenel are just West of all that, putting it just outside the ALttP map² (conveniently out of the way - sorry I love all three of you, you’re wonderful, mwah). This also means that Veil Falls would’ve been just about at the Westernmost parts of that gigantic mountain range thing in ALttP they call Death Mountain, which I’m okay with. Also means the Minish Woods was around where the Sanctuary and Hyrule Castle are in ALttP. Ouch. But I mean, it’s not the most devastating thing the Hylians have done, so moving on. Also, the first Lon Lon Ranch would be in the Death Mountain foothills, to the West. 

So, why do I like this idea so much? First, it aligns pretty neatly with the idea that the Master Sword grove in ALttP is where the Temple of Time used to be - at least, to me. But I’m also of the opinion that the Temple of Time/Sacred Grove/Lost Woods grove area are all the same - meaning that’s also where the Sealed Grounds was - and it never changed. Um... No matter what other theories I come up with/entertain, that’s always gonna be the case, I can pretty much guarantee. I just don’t like the theory that the Temple of Time was moved. Granted, I’m more okay with that idea in this timeline than in the Child Timeline, because in the Child Timeline the Hero of Time prophecy still has never come to pass, it’s still a sort of messianic legend the people believe strongly in, and even though the royal family has been told of the whole time-travel shenanigans thing, ha ha haaaaaaaaa... I don’t think they’d be able to convince an entire society that there was no longer need for that five-piece seal. The descendants of the ones entrusted with the keys are probably still clutching them tightly to this very day... Actually what am I talking about? All that stuff is forgotten about, shrouded in the mists of time and whatnot. Whoops, guess this green and shining stone can fetch me a pretty penny at the pawn shop... ANYWAY. We’re here for the Fallen Timeline right now, so let’s FOCUS. 

Another part of all this is my old theory... hypothesis?... idea? that the Sealed Temple/Temple of the Goddess, and later the Temple of Time that was build where that used to stand, were somewhere behind/within the castle in TMC (not in the game, obviously, but you know how this works). The reason I believe this, is because TMC happens at a time when Hyrule is a young kingdom. It has literally one town and everything else around it is all wild lands, as far as they’re concerned. It’s obvious that they’ve only just settled there in the past few centuries, and I doubt they would stray far from the place where they first touched down. 

So. If the Temple of Time is where the Master Sword grove is later, that would put OoT’s Hyrule Castle North of the ALttP map, Market where the Lost Woods eventually grows, Hyrule Field/the second Lon Lon Ranch in the Southern Lost Woods plus where ALttP’s Kakariko is built and the surrounding area (which also means Ordon Village is around the second Kakariko area in the Child Timeline. Amazing. No matter what happens, that land WILL be repurposed into village land. Except in the Adult Timeline, it’s been destroyed, bye-bye), and mayyyybe the Desert of Mystery where OoT’s Lake Hylia was??? Although this also means I could’ve been wrong all these years about the Minish Woods: Maybe they ARE where the OoT Lost Woods are after all. Hmmm. Honestly I still personally prefer the idea of OoT’s Lost Woods being where the Eastern Palace area is in ALttP. Lots of deforestation no matter where my theories go... That’s depressing. Hylians, stop being jerks. At least they’re less jerks than humans have historically been to each other. So far. I can only prove their oppression of AT MOST three and a half races so far, so honestly, we’re looking at an improved world here.

Ummmm I think that was about it. Did I have anything else before I zoom into the notes? No? Alrighty let’s wrap this up! 

¹ When I first played TMC, I had no problem thinking that Hyrule Castle and the one in OoT were the same, Hyrule Town became Castle Town, and the Minish Woods are located in some indeterminate woodland somewhere between Castle Town and Kakariko. But like I said, I’ve become partial to the idea that the Temple of Time is behind/around the castle in TMC, not shown, out of sight, protected, so I theorized them building a new castle elsewhere. Then again, that idea comes from the idea of the Temple of Time being built over the Sealed Grounds, and that hasn’t been shown or said in-game yet, so both options are valid to me I guess. I love Historia, and I take its word with more salt than Encyclopedia, but still not enough to season my stuffed pumpkins on a Monday night. ...I still believe wholeheartedly that Hyrule Castle in TP is a completely different castle up North from where the original one - and the town, and the Temple of Time - were in OoT, and TP’s Lake Hylia is not the same Lake Hylia, and Arbiter’s Grounds/the more “Western” style Gerudo desert is North of the OoT desert, etc., and you’ll never be able to pry that belief out of my cold, dead, fingers, so don’t even try. Er... I mean... ... Golly, you guys, aren’t hypotheses fun? ^__^

² Which I’m thinking would mean Mt. Crenel is just North of Gerudo Valley, maybe even a mountain or cliff you can see in-game, and Castor Wilds would maybe eventually be the land the river runs through in the canyon below. Or... part of said land. Who knows. Ah man now I wanna make my Link (from Peace of Heart) jump down from the Gerudo Valley bridge with her Roc’s Cape and glide down to the Wind Ruins all cool and stuff! <<33 Just kidding, Gerudo Valley is no longer exactly there in that fic, in fact Gerudo haven’t been in that area in ages. It’s... a long story. In more than one meaning of the phrase. ANYWAY.

Alternatives: Smith’s House TMC is Link’s House ALttP - this is not a new idea, I don’t think. I’ve seen other people propose it, it’s a great idea, my idea is just this but like, scooched over a little. I’m sorry, I never claimed to be original. XDD The great thing about both of these theories is that they put Syrup’s hut pretty much around the point where it is in both ALttP and TMC, if you think about it. 

Hyrule Town TMC is Hyrule Castle ALttP - this also works? Kind of? Except it doesn’t give a lot of room North of the castle for the stuff that should be there (although that’s explain-away-able if you take the “the mountain formed over the ages” route, which I personally like, because I like the idea that OoT Kakariko was around where the Sanctuary/Graveyard is in ALttP and then a series of volcanic eruptions happened, resulting in the formation of the Westernmost mountain and also the destruction of the original Kakariko and the village moving Southwest. ...I’m sorry). 

That’s all I have for you today (I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything) and to my followers, I am really sorry I’m never around anymore. I have no excuse. Please forgive me. I’ll try to make some posts about my recent LoZ misadventures, but... No promises, okay? Let’s take it one day at a time. However, you CAN follow me here to actually watch some of those misadventures, so there’s that! ^__^

Until next time, have fun, stay safe, and drink water! PACE~

[sol1056]

Do you think they couldn't make other characters queer cause of copyright? As far as my knowledge goes (correct me if i'm wrong bc I'm confused) Shiro belongs to the first itineration of Voltron, Go Lion! and Koplars are the owners of the American version. The post-s8 tea on Twitter said they weren't given permission of changing last names, what if was the same with sexualities? Koplar's Shiro, Sven was coupled with Romelle but I think Go Lion's Shiro didn't have anyone, so it was an easy pick?

That’s not really the way copyright works. 

Shiro belongs to DreamWorks, full stop, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. The same goes for Allura, Pidge, Hunk, Keith, Lance, Coran, Kolivan, Krolia, Zarkon, Lotor, Haggar/Honerva, and any other iteration of the characters as they are presented in DreamWork’s version. 

Note: I’m not saying that Shiro wasn’t a character in GoLion. I’m saying that the Shiro-of-GoLion is a character copyrighted by Toei Animation; Shiro-of-VLD is a character copyrighted by DreamWorks; Shiro of… well, any other iteration would be copyrighted by whomever created that iteration. 

It’s a complicated and heavily-legislated area of the law, but here’s the core idea boiled down into a single statement: your creation is copyrighted the instant you “fix it in a tangible medium of expression”.   

That is, you cannot copyright an idea; you can only copyright a distinct implementation. Furthermore, copyright is always owned — automatically upon creation — by the person or company who did the work of setting that idea into its concrete state. 

Behind the cut: copyrighting characters, withholding character information, cultural hot buttons, and where do we go from here. 

note #1: there is one exception, known as “work-for-hire,” where employees create something on behalf of an employer. This must known beforehand and made explicit via some kind of agreement. If you read the fine print, there’ll be a work-for-hire clause in most employee or contractor agreements.

note #2: yes, this does mean you could create a mecha series where the robots are all big lions, or a mecha series where animal-based mecha combine. It would probably end up in court anyway ‘cause companies get prickly about protecting their IPs, but afaik the court’s decision would hinge on whether your implementation is different enough.

(this is why I scoff so much at the EPs being so open about where they steal ideas from: there’s a reason writers talk about filing off the serial numbers. it’s not because we don’t want you to think we get ideas from everywhere. it’s because distinct is also a necessary ingredient for plausible deniability of plagiarism.) 

copyrighting characters

The ‘no last name’ claims are frankly a lot of hot air. 

First, you cannot copyright a character name; you can only copyright the specific and fully-developed character as a whole. (A Meg Murry who’s a South Asian marathon runner? Not a violation of L’Engle.) You could trademark a character name, but only if that name appears in the title; frex, Indiana Jones was able to be trademarked because his name is part of a series of works that all begin with “Indiana Jones.” 

WEP could trademark Voltron (as the mecha’s name), but doesn’t look like WEP chose to do so. Recent research seems to indicate WEP actually embraces and supports non-media products (that is, things that are obviously not their adaptation-of-an-anime) using the name, possibly on the theory this wide usage increases the name’s recognition and cultural cachet.

Second, consider Devil’s Due Publishing (DDP), which gave every character a full name, new biography, age, height, and family history. It retains its copyright over those characters, but only as whole characters. You could make your Keith Kogane an orphan in his mid-20s who’s distinctly anti-social, and you’d probably be fine, because that description is still more of a stereotype than a distinct/unique character. 

To quote the legal encyclopedia:

Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit established the standard for character protection in a case called Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930), when he stated that, “the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.”

For example, alien characters stranded on Earth is a popular and recurring theme as portrayed in My Favorite Martian, Starman, Alien Nation, Transformers, District 9, Predators, and The Man Who Fell to Earth. The idea of a stranded alien character, without embellishment, is not protectable.

[…] once a stranded alien character acquires more distinctive features or aspects—for example, a big-headed, long-necked alien with a glowing finger who murmurs “Phone home”—it becomes distinct enough to merit protection and its owners can prevent others from using the character’s image and expression.

If you make your misanthropic orphan named Keith also a former Marine, and an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and grieving a dead fiancee… He’s no longer a stereotype, but a character with a unique combination of features. DDP probably would have grounds to send you a cease-and-desist. 

However, if you say Keith Kogane is a lonely kid from Texas with an alien mom and a fireman dad, who’s the best damn pilot of his generation, and is generally awkward and whose silence hides a whip-smart intellect… again, a unique combination that fleshes out generic ‘Keith’ into a very specific and distinct Keith. Who is not, it should be noted, a carbon-copy of DDP’s Keith.

And the real nail in the coffin: if you’re going to argue that it’s a copyright violation to use Keith’s or Lance’s or Hunk’s last names, then why wouldn’t the same apply to using their first names? Or using names like Daibazaal, Sincline, Lotor, Honerva, Haggar, Alfor, Yurak, etc. Pretty sure ‘Zarkon’ isn’t a name you see everyday. I mean, it’s not, say, ‘Bob.’ 

withholding information

I’ve seen staff from another DW project say they can’t specify character ages until marketing decides. Which is… truly bizarre. If DW really is having marketing make such creative decisions, it’s not just putting the cart before the horse, it’s putting the cart in the jewelry store and the horse in the attic. 

If marketing or PR is anywhere in the mix, perhaps that’s because someone with social media savvy has realized topics like ethnicity and age will bring out the vitriolic teeny meanies of the Fandom Purity Police Brigade. Thing is, that doesn’t hold water, either: Trollhunters gave us ages and grade-in-school.

There could be another layer, too. The EPs I saw in those earliest interviews clearly had little firsthand experience with fandom, and seemed startled to hear fans actually care about those details. Two years of their interviews, and I have the strong sense they don’t like losing what they see as a battle of wills, no matter who their opponent is. Fandom cries out for surnames? Fandom will never get it. Fandom likes this couple over that one? Fandom is heading for severe disappointment. And so on. 

That’s ignoring the praise the EPs enjoyed for fandom’s conflation of a Korean-American VA and a Korean studio’s aesthetics, to see Keith himself as non-white. The EPs got representation points, and didn’t have to do a thing; the fandom did it for them. Why mess with that?

But no, copyright has nothing to do with that. 

cultural hot buttons

Sexuality, gender, and ethnicity are three places that a franchisee could run into problems, because these are hot buttons in the US. If the franchise owner feels a particular tangible form (this specific character in this specific iteration) violates the franchise’s ‘family-friendly’ aspect of their brand… I’d bet the contract between the parties does give the franchise owner some right of refusal or revision. 

Set aside what you think of VLD’s beginning, middle, or end. For all LM’s other faults, that sketch she did so long ago highlights all three: gender (Pidge), race (Keith and Allura), and sexuality (Shiro). We may’ve had to wait for an unfortunately tacked-on epilogue to get explicit confirmation*, but in the end, VLD was a significant break from previous Voltron iterations. 

Where, exactly, is anyone getting the impression that WEP is so terribly upset about its princess no longer being white, one of its pilots no longer being male, or another pilot no longer being straight? Whatever Bob Koplar might think of VLD’s end, his statement on the day of S8′s release made clear WEP is eager to continue their partnership with DW. 

Sounds to me like WEP is okay with DW’s creative and cultural approach. Otherwise, why go back for more? 

* edited to clarify, per @inklingdancer‘s tag

moving right along

It ultimately doesn’t matter what a previous iteration did. So long as DW’s creation is fully its own, copyright is neither barrier nor impetus to providing (or withholding) any information about that creation. 

What DW creates, DW owns. Which means DW is free to tell us last names, middle names, heights, ages, family history, race, gender, sexuality, love interest, even most hated food or favorite color — or nothing at all. 

[bambamramfan]

Time to beat my dead horse; the topics you’re discussing here have a lot of deep parallels in the psychoanalytic literature. First, Scott writes:

}} “If you force people to legibly interpret everything they do, or else stop doing it under threat of being called lazy or evil, you make their life harder”

This idea is treated by Lacan as the central ethical problem of psychoanalysis: under what circumstances is it acceptable to cast conscious light upon a person’s unconsciously-motivated behavior? The answer is usually “only if they seek it out, and only then if it would help them reduce their level of suffering”.

Turn the psychoanalytic, phenomenology-oriented frame onto social issues, as you’ve partly done, and suddenly we’re in Zizek-land (his main thrust is connecting social critique with psychoanalytic concepts). The problem is that (a) Zizek is jargon-heavy and difficult to understand, and (b) I’m not nearly as familiar with Zizek’s work as with more traditional psychoanalytic concepts. But I’ll try anyway. From a quick encyclopedia skim, he actually uses a similar analogy with fetishes (all quotes from IEP):

}} “Žižek argues that the attitude of subjects towards authority revealed by today’s ideological cynicism resembles the fetishist’s attitude towards his fetish. The fetishist’s attitude towards his fetish has the peculiar form of a disavowal: “I know well that (for example) the shoe is only a shoe, but nevertheless, I still need my partner to wear the shoe in order to enjoy.” According to Žižek, the attitude of political subjects towards political authority evinces the same logical form: “I know well that (for example) Bob Hawke / Bill Clinton / the Party / the market does not always act justly, but I still act as though I did not know that this is the case.””

As for how beliefs manifest, Zizek clarifies the experience of following a tradition and why we might actually feel like these traditions are aligned with “Reason” from the inside, and also the crux of why “Reason” can fail so hard in terms of social change:

According to Žižek, all successful political ideologies necessarily refer to and turn around sublime objects posited by political ideologies. These sublime objects are what political subjects take it that their regime’s ideologies’ central words mean or name extraordinary Things like God, the Fuhrer, the King, in whose name they will (if necessary) transgress ordinary moral laws and lay down their lives… Kant’s subject resignifies its failure to grasp the sublime object as indirect testimony to a wholly “supersensible” faculty within herself (Reason), so Žižek argues that the inability of subjects to explain the nature of what they believe in politically does not indicate any disloyalty or abnormality. Žižek argues that the inability of subjects to explain the nature of what they believe in politically does not indicate any disloyalty or abnormality. What political ideologies do, precisely, is provide subjects with a way of seeing the world according to which such an inability can appear as testimony to how Transcendent or Great their Nation, God, Freedom, and so forth is—surely far above the ordinary or profane things of the world.

[kahran042]

Encyclopedia Brown thoughts: book 23

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Jumping Frogs

General:

This is the last EB book to feature a Two-Minute Mysteries rewrite - The Case of the Lawn Mower Races.

The Case of the Rhyming Robber:

Um, @brownencyclopedia, you know that the book outright states that The Poet doesn't commit crimes for the loot, but for the thrill of outsmarting the police, right?

What kind of highway doesn't have mile markers?

The Case of the Miracle Pill:

I think this is the only book where Wilford Wiggins appears before Bugs Meany.

I also think this is the only case where Wilford isn't explicitly stated to be a high-school dropout.

Even if Antiflow were legit, I can't see what effect a little pill would have on a major body of water.

The Case of the Black Horse:

As I said earlier, flat-Earthers deserve no sympathy or validation, no matter how young.

Whatever did happen to Farnsworth Grant, anyway?

Get it? His name is Waldo Emerson, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he wrote an essay? :rollseyes:

Considering that Waldo wrote a whole essay on his insane troll logic theory, I'd say that he's being serious. He's just an idiot.

It must take a lot of restraint for anyone not to punch Waldo in the face. He's a child and, more importantly, not real, and I want to do so.

I love the fact that Waldo's prize was a round globe. >:D

The Case of Nemo's Tuba:

Nemo Huffenwiz easily is the goofiest name in this series so far. And he's "pudgy", to boot. Poor kid.

"March of the Frosty Flowers" isn't real, a quick Google search tells me, and neither is Suchalicki.

Nemo's parents didn't buy or rent a tuba. In their page-skimming, @brownencyclopedia obviously missed the fact that the instruments belong to the school, and that students aren't allowed to take the tuba home. :P

Why does Nemo refer to Alma as "big Alma," other than to make her look bad? Is he jealous that she has a better name than him?

The conductor of the youth orchestra is the second Mr. Downing to appear in this series, and the third Downing overall. New headcanon: he’s the son of John Downing from The Case of the Old Calendars and the father of Lizzie Downing from The Case of the Manhole Cover.

As much as I hate to admit it, @brownencyclopedia actually has a good point here - it does seem more like Nemo is trying to sabotage Alma than the other way around.

The Case of the Ring in the Reef:

Pretty strange for Bugs and the Tigers to not come up until the fifth case when they're normally introduced in the first or second.

I knew that dead fish floated, but I didn't know that they eventually sank, or that they lost their color.

The Case of the Jumping Frogs:

At least it's acknowleged that Ribbet is a nickname right from the start.

Why would anyone want or need a college for frogs?

Yes, Stinky has been a problem at least twice before, but Alma has only appeared once and, as stated earlier, seemed like more of a victim than the actual victim in that particular case.

Nice to see some depth to Stinky and Alma, with them being members of the science club.

Why does every kid in this series say "grown-up" instead of "adult"?

The Case of the Toy Locomotive:

Sol is kind of a cool name. Birdie... not so much.

Another @brownencyclopedia mistake: The locomotive wasn't one of the toys that the chiddlers were playing with. It had been brought in by "one of the men in bookkeeping" and donated to the auction.

Sledge is Bugs Meany's cousin, so of course he's going to be the crook here. :P

I'm glad that Sledge got to keep the locomotive he paid for.

The Case of the Air Guitar:

@brownencyclopedia actually has a good point in pointing out how ridiculous the rules of this air-guitar contest are.

Only one kid in a group of six had a digital watch in 2003?

The story itself contradicts its own solution by pointing out that someone with an analog watch could keep time just as precisely as someone with a digital watch, seeing as the analog watches all had minute hands.

And, of course, I seriously doubt that all analog/digital watch-wearers would state the time in the exact same way, as is implied here.

The Case of the Backwards Runner:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Scholastic football teams at any level below college are a completely alien concept to me. Not good, not bad, just...weird. This could be because I went to probably the only high school in the United States without a football team.

Same goes for scholastic wrestling teams at any level below high school.

If you ask me, Felix and Rupert should just vilg and get it over with.

Five more books, and this project is fini!